“The Washington establishment, and the financial and media corporations that fund it, exist for only one reason: To protect and enrich itself.” — Donald Trump, “Campaign Speech,” 2016 —

In the national elections of 2010, voters overwhelmingly sent Republicans to Congress with a clear message: Get rid of the entrenched power elite and the laws they have passed.

Republicans in those new positions, however — with few exceptions — sat on their tails and became part of the power elite instead.

You would think, at that point, that the voters would have taken the hint to heart. They didn’t, however, and proceeded to make the same mistake in 2014, with exactly the same results.

Well, the voters didn’t miss it this time. After being burned by Establishment Republicans twice in a row, they’d had enough. This year, in addition to all the states that typically vote Republican, several swing states joined the throng and, as of early Wednesday morning, just propelled maverick candidate Donald Trump into the White House.

The Establishment Republicans have never understood Mr. Trump’s rise or what motivated it. To this day, they have never figured out that it was their own political shenanigans and corruption that made him possible.

And — implicitly in some cases, explicitly in others — that Establishment fought tooth and nail to take him out every chance they had. But, because they never understood the forces that created Mr. Trump’s candidacy in the first place, they never figured out that all they were doing was throwing flames on the fire.

The conduct of the Establishment Republicans, in this national contest, has been reprehensible. Realizing the grave threat that Mr. Trump poses to their power structure, they have fought him with far more force than they ever employed against our radical Marxist president Barack Obama (which is what they were sent to Washington, D.C. to do). And thereby sealed their own sorry fate.

To which more than 50 percent of America is now saying: Goodbye and good riddance.

Just for the record, I am not a supporter of Mr. Trump. I find some of his fascistic tendencies — such as threatening to force companies to not leave the country if they choose to do so — extremely disturbing to behold.

But how on Earth can anyone who has helplessly watched, for decades, this nation’s descent into the chaos and catastrophe of ever-growing collectivism, not cheer when they hear someone say that “it’s time to drain the swamp”?

One can only hope that Mr. Trump will even half-way live up to that expectation — because, make no mistake about it, that’s what he’s being sent to Washington, D.C. to do. And, for those of us who recognized the final nail in the coffin of the U.S. Republic in a Hillary Clinton presidency, it can’t happen fast enough.

We’re still in extremely dire straits, and this column isn’t long enough to detail the number and magnitude of the issues we currently face. But — now — we have a very, very slim chance, whereas with radical Alinsky-ite Mrs. Clinton we would have had no chance at all. We need to keep a very firm eye on Mr. Trump and make sure he follows through — and keep his own collectivistic tendencies in check as well.

Our Republic flounders around us, Dear Reader — still flying but on broken wings. We have abandoned the principles which made us great by trading in our freedoms for “welfare” checks and state-provided medical care.

Will we survive? Who knows? Yes, Mr. Trump needs to “drain that swamp” all right — but what America truly needs is a consistently thorough rejection of all forms of collectivism, socialist or fascist, and a re-vitalization of the principles of liberty and individualism that gave rise to its prominence originally. In the absence of such a plan, we will have simply postponed our collapse a few more years.

So, now that the voters have done their job and sent the corrupt Mr. and Mrs. Clinton packing on their way to their well-earned ash-heap of history, isn’t it about time that the nation’s intellectuals step up to the plate and do theirs? Isn’t it about time we solve this problem right at the root?

Two years ago on these pages, I asked: “Where are our modern-day Thomas Paines, Patrick Henrys and Thomas Jeffersons, the men and women who are not afraid to pledge their ‘lives, fortunes and sacred honor’ for the resurrection of individual liberty, the men and women dedicated to the sovereignty of the Rights of Man?” (“Where’s the Character of 1776?,” WTE, July 4, 2014.)

That need has not disappeared; to the contrary, it has grown greater than ever, and the preservation of our civilization hangs in the balance.

Bradley Harrington is a computer technician and a writer who lives in Cheyenne. Email:bradhgt1776@gmail.com.